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You might be under the impression that crochet design is a free flowing process from inspiration to finished project. It often involves more blockades then you’d expect.

I’ve been interested in Faroese knitted shawl construction for some time. I had decided that I wanted to take the construction concepts for knitted Faroese shawls and adapt them to crocheted shawls. I painstakingly swatched and planned out a gorgeous shawl involving 3 different stitch patterns and a unique continuous border construction. It is not possible to put into words how excited I was about this project- until I started making it.

I spent more time frogging than I did stitching. The problem wasn’t the planning- my idea was fine. I just kept making silly mistakes every single row (sometimes multiple times, every single row). Now when challenges arise, I meet them head on. But in this case, I honestly felt like the universe was telling me this just wasn’t meant to be right now. So I quit.

But you can’t just quit a project you fall in love with. I had these beautiful stitch patterns I had developed. How could I let them wallow in the obscurity of my filing cabinet? How could I let all that effort go to waste? So I decided to use them for something else.

My favorite stitch pattern of the three is being turned into an enclosed cape*. I’m writing the pattern for both a sock weight and a sport weight version and adding in an optional beaded edging. The beaded edging has beads added as you crochet. (No pre-stringing required.) So, I’ll be adding photo tutorials to the pattern for that technique, and likely video tutorials for it to the website soon.

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Left: Still on the hook sport weight version in Madeline Tosh Sport. Right: Finished sock weight version in Holiday Yarns Flock Sock.

I still have no idea what to name it. I was thinking of Alice, but I’m not quite sold on that. Any thoughts?

*”What is an enclosed cape?” you ask. It’s a poncho. But I can’t say “poncho” because it makes me think of hippies** and bad 70s acid trips. So I say enclosed cape, because it sounds prettier.

** I have nothing against hippies. I lived in tie-dye during college.